Sierra Entertainment set to return with new game at Gamescom 2014

Longtime gamers got a big surprise on Thursday night. A new splash logo has been revealed for Sierra Games, a decades-old development studio responsible for a countless number of games across a variety of platforms. Their work ranges from a large number of well-known franchises, including King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Gabriel Knight, and Ultima. They've also helped publish a number of Valve games, like Half-Life 2. And now it appears that they're ready to return with an all-new project, set to be revealed at this year's Gamescom.

Sierra fell under the Activision umbrella as part of the 2008 merger between Activision and Blizzard parent company Vivendi, which created the current Activision Blizzard giant we know today. The studio largely remained quiet since that sale, but it looks like Activision is ready to dust off the old brand and bring a new gaming franchise forward.

It's clearly a bit early to speculate on what Sierra could be working on, but the fact that they're even alive and kicking at all should raise excitement for anyone that grew up with their vast library of games.

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

Agreed. The Williams were pretty much the heart and soul of the original Sierra. This is just purely a marketing stunt. I mean, sure I'd love to see a modern KQ, but do we really think Activision would risk doing a point and click adventure? No.

I could see Activision try to do some kind of KQ themed RPG (A-RPG?). More focus on the story side than puzzles and/or action. The only reason being is that Broken Age did so well on Kickstarter. But, not sure if it's actually sold well otherwise.

I especially remember one in KQ5 where you walk into a frame and a cat runs across the bottom of the screen with something in his mouth. You have to throw some shit at him to drop the whatever (a key maybe?) or you get stuck in a cellar later and can't beat the game.

Bit of a long shot to associate Sierra with Ultima: the only thing they ever dealt with was the publishing of the 2nd one, an Atari version of Ultima I and the infamous Escape from Mount Drash, they're far less linked to the series than EA ever was.

I would say Activision is soon announcing King's Quest since they tore down the contract that they had with Telltale on creating new King's Quest games. Most likely some brainiac thought about having Sierra as publisher for that.

Lets see, maybe already at Gamescom there is an announcement about KQ.

when I think of Sierra I think of the 'Quest games... King's Quest specifically. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to grab some of what Telltale is doing and start releasing episodic KQ games and then move on to SQ if those are successful.

If they're reviving a game series it probably has to be an older one, because I think all the new ones got sold off after the Activision / Vivendi merger. I know Ground Control did, and I'm pretty sure I saw a bunch of others go as well.